Now as many of you by now know, I am in the middle of a long trip abroad. There is nothing so important when travelling, to my mind, as to have the right books, so a large chunk of my budget is always spent at Smith's in the airport before I've even gone near a plane. I arrive in plenty of time to make my selection, because as I work my way through their limited selections, it gets harder and harder to find books I actually want to read.
I was actually on the verge of giving up and investing in yet another reliable Jilly Cooper when I spotted this book, Out of Africa by Karen Blixen. Of course I'd heard of it, and vaguely knew there was a movie, but it was one of those books I'd never got round to reading. I can't remember who defined a classic novel as a book no-one had read but everyone thought they ought to have, but they're pretty much right.
So I bought it and read it, and am now wondering how on earth I never got round to it before. It is quite simply one of the most marvellous pieces of prose non-fiction writing I have ever come across. It is always a mystery to me why fiction writing is rated so much higher than non-fiction writing, as the latter is just as difficult to do well, and I challenge any novelist to produce work as clear and poetic, as passionate and flowing as this.
So what's it all about? On the most simple level, it is Karen Blixen's account of the years she spent in Africa, Kenya to be precise, running a coffee farm with her husband. But much much more than that, it is an extraordinary tale of one woman's love affair with a country and its people, a tale of how an foreigner lost in a loveless marriage found incredible emotional and spiritual sustenance from the utterly alien world in which she found herself.
Many of the things she describes are quite everyday: tales about her cook, the struggles on the farm, the baby deer she adopted, her collection of houseboys. She tells them in deceptively simple, often very factual ways, her writing itself remarkably unemotional - this is a long way from purple prose - yet conveying her respect, compassion and awe for the Africans who worked with her and for her. The book is peopled with remarkable characters: by the end you will feel like you'd recognise them all in a second should you ever meet them. There are the Africans in her house, the local tribes, the eccentric collection of expats resident in nearby Nairobi, the charming Indian who runs the forge, even the baby dear becomes as real to the reader as a true acquaintance.
For me, there is an added poignancy in that the only other European she lived with, her husband is only mentioned twice in the entire book, and only then in passing. And yes, I did count. This omission is profoundly moving, as it hints so effectively at the failure of her marriage and leaves to the imagination the profound emotional impact it must have had on her. It adds an extra dimension to the love she pours into Africa and her servants and makes this book as genuine and passionate a story of a love affair as you will ever find.
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